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I feel so badly about this one. It’s been an entire week since Jim, one of the greatest, bestest-taste-having idol fans in existence in addition to being kind of a big deal when it comes to that whole punk business, very excitedly shared that Bury, as stripped-down a chika unit as any chika unit has any right to be, has in fact de-stripped-down operations by en-sleekening their look and opening up their very own Bandcamp.*

Which is actually now two full weeks old. My bad! If you wanted to listen, though, said Bandcamp can provide:

Now that you’ve listened to those songs, you’re going to buy them, right? At about $.50, there isn’t a better bargain. And then you’re going to follow Bury and become a devoted gaijin fan and encourage this unexpectedly promising punk project (p-p-p!) to succeed!

*Given how many bands turn to Bandcamp, I’m literally amazed that nobody named Bury had claimed a domain yet

Context for the title of the post! I had this weird feeling that EMPiRE’s major debut album release, teased a couple of days ago, was going to settle the follow-or-not question. Yes, even after that thing with the giant sentient butt, I was skeptical that EMPiRE would come out the other end of the chute as genuinely interesting. I was all geared up for it: They’re going to try to make EMPiRE happen no matter what, aren’t they?

I’m so sorry for missing this one yesterday, but the powers that be at Aqbi are giving us all a chance at a free OTOTOY download of the latest single, or I guess just the A-side because that’s all that OTOTOY will let me download. Regardless!

This is a really bad one, you guys, and I’m sorry, but in addition to just plain missing the best chance to share this (Sunday, or HAMIDASYSTEM Day in Japan, as the cool kids now it), I almost forgot about it. It’s just a lyric video, but I’ll be gosh-damned if it isn’t just further confirmation that HAMIDASYSTEM is in that rarefied territory of being legitimately better than, oh, 98 percent of other things in idol, and that they’re inversely well-appreciated by the gibbering masses who don’t so much exist as much as I need a handy strawman to make my point so there:

Ages ago, back when I was planning out how I wanted to do this idiotic project, I wrote out a series of topics that I thought were worth discussing. It’s worth noting that said editorial outline ultimately turned into nothing because I had grossly underestimated the size and complexity of just this little corner of the Idolverse, and I wasn’t ever going to have time to make a lot of those pieces happen. Noting that, however, I can still say that I had wanted to do a pre-most-WACK-things post on the general career arc of one Watanabe Junnosuke, questioning whether it was skill or luck that had gotten him through (at the time) OG BiS, OG BiSH and OG Pla2POP.

It’s time to start to say goodbye, apparently. BiS has placed both tracks from their re-major debut and final single with their founder, the grandest dame of them all and likely part of the string-pulling machinery at WACK, Pour Lui, out into the world for completely free listens:

So while I spent a good part of the weekend pining for some positive news from Tsurezure (I think the 100 Days was an inadvertent curse), it’s their new sister group that’s popping out the new song preview on Monday morning. “Hide and Seek” is currently on the two-hour teaser release, but you know how we roll around here:

Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Idol is gearing up for a hell of a 2018 with a bunch of teasers in the waning moments of 2017 that should do no less than to whet your appetite for an incredible year in music. In this case? Just one of Maniac’s very favorite things, Tokyo’s Dots, who have their first full-length album coming out in January — but you can get a full preview of the whole dang thing beginning right now if you know what’s good for you:

What a treat! In addition to my nigh-week-long sojourn in the perpetual throes of Day Job nearing its merciful end, there are two great idol projects with completely free(!) new(ish!!) downloads(!!!) to snag and enjoy like the absurd indulgences that they are.

First up! Yanakoto Sotto Mute, whose one-man the other day was probably a completely epochal occurrence that I, of course, did not attend on account of being tied not just to the United States, but the National Capital Region because boring reasons. Nonetheless, the echoes show … you know? I think it’d be keen if one of you guys scored a bunch of holographic technology, and also really high-end streaming equipment, and just streamed my favorite lives to the comfort of my living room, a life-sized Nadeshiko in among the detritus of a life spent doing little of what it’d like to be doing.